The strange movie in the strange Manti Te’o case

The bizarre case of Notre Dame linebacker and Heisman runner-up Manti Te’o, who fell in love online with a woman who didn’t exist, could turn out to be a promotional goldmine for “Catfish,” the MTV reality show from the folks who created the 2010 documentary film of the same name.

“Certainly the movie ‘Catfish is getting a lot of play, isn’t it?” said Mike Golic on ESPN Radio’s “Mike and Mike in the Morning” show this morning.

No kidding. It’s now even a verb. To be snared or hoaxed in an online relationship is to be “catfished.”

The movie, which had only a brief theatrical run in San Antonio (I remember it showing up with no advance publicity at a single multiplex), follows New York photographer and videographer Nev Schulman as he develops an online relationship with a family in Michigan and becomes infatuated with Facebook images of their 19-year-old daughter, Megan. As with the Te’o case, Schulman ignores red flags because he wants to believe what he’s seeing and reading.

The upshot is, Schulman and his coworkers in his New York studio decide to drop in unannounced on the family’s farm on the way back from a job in Vail. Needless to say, things aren’t what they seem, as Roger Ebert hints at in his review.

The trailer appears to be a sort of misdirection play — suggesting a lighthearted lark of a road trip that suddenly turns into a horror flick about the time Schulman walks up to the family’s garage door and peers inside. Hitchcock’s name is dropped onscreen, which suggests something really disturbing.

The reality is apparently much less sinister (I haven’t seen the film, but I’ve read enough to know the bare-bones story line). Anyway, Schulman spun off the movie into an MTV reality show in which he tries to match up online friends and/or lovers to see who’s telling the truth and who isn’t. The show, which debuted Nov. 12, has already been renewed for a second season.

A cynic would suggest it’s about getting its jollies showing people having their dreams crushed when they learn the truth, but Schulman says that’s not the goal.

“Whether or not two people are totally lying to each other and it turns out to be a huge disaster, that’s only the first part of the story,” he said in an August press tour. “We then want to know why they are doing it, who they are, what they are feeling, what led them to this place, and why that resonates with thousands of other young people who have the same feelings, who don’t have someone to talk to or don’t know how to express themselves.”

And he’s already up to speed on the Te’o case (find his reaction here), which means everything has come full circle.